Fishing in the Dark
by Tolakasa
Summary: Some jobs are just trouble from the start.


**Fishing in the Dark**

Dean entertained himself by making sculptures out of his leftover eggs while Sam surfed the net, looking for something that might turn into a case. Normally he'd read a paper, but this town was too small to have one, the boxes out front were empty, and all the copies in the diner itself were spoken for.

Yet it had wireless. Go figure.

"This could be something," Sam said, glancing up. He gave the Leaning Tower of Yolk an odd look. "Or we could drop everything and send you to art school."

"Bite me."

"That's what your eggs are saying to you. Anyway. Ghost fisherman. Haunts a pond in North Carolina."

"The whole pond?"

"Apparently."

"And?"

Sam raised an eyebrow, a silent _That's not enough?_ "Six deaths in the last ten years. Bodies never recovered. There's even a story about a guy who drove his car in. Also never recovered."

"They never recovered a _car?_ I can understand missing a body, especially if something tore it up, but how do you overlook a _car?_"

"Apparently they don't send divers in."

"Why not?"

"They never come back up."

* * *

It started going wrong as soon as they hit the border. Literally. They had no sooner driven across the Tennessee/North Carolina state line than a rockslide took out the highway behind them. 

Navigating North Carolina was a nightmare, even for two guys who had grown up on the interstates. For starters, apparently Ashe_ville_ and Ashe_boro_ were two entirely different places, separated by three hours of driving, and neither one was remotely near Ashe County. Green_ville_ and Greens_boro_? Another two hours. (Greenville was apparently at least _close_ to Greene County, though not _in_ it.) They spent Saturday night in some rinky-dink beach town, not sure of much except that they were hell and gone from where they were _supposed_ to be.

While the locals were very friendly and gave great directions, that didn't help a bit if you asked for directions to the wrong town. Heck, they'd asked for Denton in one little town (somewhere between Mooresville and Moore County) and been told how to get to _Texas_.

"Who the hell puts Pittsboro in Chatham County and Greenville in Pitt County?" Sam muttered, fighting with the map. Maps. They'd bought one at every stop—road maps, topo maps, even a couple of lake maps.

They'd wound up in Martinsville. _Virginia_. Which would have been great if they were looking for a NASCAR race like everybody _else_ on 220. Three hours in traffic.

Three.

Fucking.

Hours.

On the upside, it was a hot day and apparently there was no modesty standard for female NASCAR fans. So at least there was nice scenery.

"I begin to understand why Dad never came to this part of the country," Dean grumbled, awhile after they finally got out of that nightmare—and then whipped the Impala across three lanes of traffic, narrowly missing a tractor that had no business being on the shoulder of an interstate _anyway_, to make an exit that promised Asheboro. (It also promised a zoo, which they'd been told was the defining characteristic of 'boro; 'ville's thing was apparently some old mansion.) "No more jobs in North Carolina!" he added, glaring at his brother.

"Not arguing."

Finding the right county was only half the battle. Sunday night's motel was outrageously expensive (Dean wondered if that had anything to do with the festivities in Martinsville, but surely the race fans wouldn't be driving two hours just to spend the night), but they set out on Monday morning with high hopes.

They drove completely around the county at least twice. Six _hours_ of driving, plus about fifteen stops for directions at what seemed to be the county's main products, gas stations and pottery shops, before Dean finally gave in to Sam's suggestion and found an electronics store. Road signs were apparently a fairly new invention here in East Buttfuck, NC, and every road had at least ten different names _in addition_ to the incomprehensible state route numbers listed by Rand-McNally.

Thirty minutes after Sam finished programming the GPS—a handheld model, naturally, as there was no way in hell Dean was letting him mount one of those gizmos on the Impala's dashboard—they found the pond.

Actually, they nearly drove _into_ it, as the overgrown trail masquerading as a road took a sharp curve and ended a little _too_ abruptly. There was no slope, either downhill or uphill, to warn him. Gravel, grass, then a sudden expanse of water. Thank _God_ he kept the brakes in good condition.

"_Jesus!_" Sam yelled from his sudden position under the dashboard.

Dean grinned and put the car in reverse. "Dude, I had no idea you could fold that way."

"Shut up," Sam growled, attempting to un-cram himself. "We gotta get seat belts for this thing."

"Blasphemy!" Dean parked the car at a safer distance from the water.

"Just—make sure—_fuck!_" Sam rubbed his elbow, which had just gotten a good whack on the glove compartment, and Dean laughed. "I guess I should just be happy I didn't go through the windshield."

"You break, you buy." Dean climbed out of the car quickly—it got him out of Sam's reach, and gave him a better angle from which to watch his brother finish twisting his way out from under the dashboard. He hadn't thought he'd hit the brakes _that_ hard. They'd had way more sudden stops and Sam had never wound up under the dash. Hadn't they? "Come on, let's find this ghost."

It looked like a perfectly ordinary pond. Not even perfectly round—just a big, irregular hole filled with water, in which swam dark fishy shapes. Occasionally an exuberant fish kissed the surface. The water was clear, but light didn't go far; there was maybe a foot of visibility.

"You can't see the bottom," Dean observed, chucking a rock into the water. It went _plop_ near the center, leaving behind a circle of violent ripples.

"Can't see much at all," Sam corrected. He was kneeling by the edge, peering down into the water—in easy reach of anything that might decide to grab his hair and drag him under, but after Sam's little trip under the dash, Dean erred on the side of not pushing it. "The sides go straight down."

"Weird?"

"Unusual, at the least. Might not be a natural formation." He leaned back from the edge. "Old quarry, maybe?"

"That help us any?"

"People die in old quarries all the time. Cold water shock. Weakens the muscles so they can't swim and they drown. Even quicker if they're drunk." Sam studied the water, frowning a bit. "But that doesn't explain the divers."

"Or the guy with the car."

"Dean, _we_ nearly drove into it."

"Yeah, but he was a local. He should have known it was here." Something occurred to him. "Think it was a suicide?"

"Suicide?" Sam stared at him. "There's got to be a hundred better ways to kill yourself."

"Maybe some other ghost took over, drove him in. Shit, there could be a dozen cars in the bottom of this puddle and nobody would know. How did they know about—"

"There was a witness. But I see your point." Sam stood up, and absently kicked a rock into the water. "Wonder how many cars _are_ down there?"

One way to find out. "Wasn't there a town we kept driving around, somewhere in the middle?" Sam nodded. "Think they've got a library?"

"They had a Wal-Mart. Usually means the town's big enough for at least one library."

"Bet the Wal-Mart gets a lot more business."

"I don't take sucker bets."

* * *

The librarian—like most underappreciated hobbyist historians—was thrilled at the chance to help anyone who wasn't badgering her about the latest Harry Potter book (either to check it out or to have it removed from the shelves). Dean suspected that, if they'd _really_ turned on the charm, they could have waltzed out of here with every scrap of paper in the Local History Room. And she would have been _smiling_ as they did. 

Despite the generous assistance, all they found were variations on the Halloween article, a few obituaries, and some stray obit-related references to "the Rockhole," which seemed to be as close as the pond came to having a name. It didn't even make the local maps—local maps which included such important landmarks as "Booger Branch."

"It _is_ a quarry," Sam announced from somewhere in a pile of old books that testified to the slowness of the Computer Age in arriving here. Dean peered over his own stack of yellowing paper. It looked like Sam had found an old deed book. "They used it to get materials for that four-lane. Then—hm."

"Is that a good hm?"

"Operations finished in '65. The first drowning was in '67."

"Two years to fill up and for word to spread about a shiny new place to get drunk and make out. Makes sense."

"The first was supposedly a drunk teenager. But between '68 and '70, there were _seventeen_ more drownings—"

"What, they staged a _Titanic_ re-enactment?"

"—and five lost divers. Most of them—" Sam rummaged through his papers. "Most were blamed on drunkenness and/or stupidity, but the last two were a pair of very strict Southern Baptists."

"So?"

"Southern Baptists don't drink."

"See? Proof of stupidity."

"_Dean._"

"What?"

"Anyhow," Sam went on, not _quite_ sighing, "it was either get sued into bankruptcy or turn the property over to the state. So the road company turned their lease over to the state—"

"Let me guess. They put up a gate and some signs and were absolutely _stunned_ that drunk teenagers kept skinny-dipping."

"Something like that."

"Fucking bureaucrats." He shoved his useless stack of paper across the table. "Anything else?"

"A few more deaths. Apparently the local fire department used it as a water source and that kept the skinny-dippers to a minimum, since there was never any telling when they'd show up. Then the state turned—huh."

"Will you quit making noises and just _tell_ me the information?"

"Sorry. Some kind of environmental trust took over care. That's when the deaths _really_ dropped." He looked up. "But there's no signs. Nothing to keep people out." He sounded vaguely offended. "There wasn't even a _gate_."

Dean tapped a pencil on the table. "Well, they could chase people off, I guess."

"And word hasn't gotten out?"

"They could chase them off violently and feed them to the lake monster."

"Pond, and I don't think it's big enough for a monster."

"Maybe it's a hungry ghost, Sam, geez! It wouldn't be the first time one made bodies disappear!"

"I guess."

Sam sounded unconvinced, but Dean didn't think he was going to get anything more definite out of him. "If it's a ghost, the body's probably lost in the pond. Can't drain it. Probably too waterlogged to burn even if we could find it. How do we get him, her, or it out of the water?"

Sam shook his head. "The only thing I can think of is blessing the water. We can't pour salt into a freshwater pond, it'd kill everything in it—"

"Fish or people. Let me think."

"—_and_ half the stuff downriver," Sam finished dryly. "There's also the inconvenient fact that even _your_ car won't hold enough salt to get the water to a concentration where it'll banish the spirit."

"One quarry full of holy water, coming up. Probably should sanctify everything around it, too. Just one thing we need."

Sam frowned. "We don't have everything we need?"

"Not quite."

* * *

"This is a new one," Sam said, thumbing through the journal by the light of the Impala's headlights, looking for the appropriate ritual. 

"Why is it you say that every time _I_ come up with the crazy idea?" Dean retorted.

Sam looked up. "You _are_ tying a rosary to the end of a _fishing line_."

"What?" Dean cut the fishing line free of the spool. "Think I should have gone with the forty-pound test instead of the twenty?" Sam made a noise that wasn't quite a snort. "I'm not actually expecting to catch a fish. And ghosts don't weigh anything. I think. Besides," he added, "who was it that sent me driving into a burned-out church with _no_ idea if it would actually work or not?"

"That doesn't count."

"Why not?"

"Because it _did_ work."

"You just got lucky."

"Not on that trip," Sam muttered.

It took Dean a few seconds to catch the double meaning. "Not my fault." He glanced at Sam. "Any particular reason you're being extra-smart-alecky today?" Sam made another one of those noises. "It's the fishing, isn't it?"

"I like fishing," Sam said, a little too quickly, a little too defensively.

"You liked watching me land on my ass whenever I lost my footing."

"The entertainment was a plus." Sam actually smiled. "You know, I don't remember me and Dad ever _fighting_ when we went fishing?"

"Dude, you think I was that clumsy _naturally?_ Even you two couldn't rip out each other's throats if you were busy laughing at me." He finished knotting the fishing line. "Got the ritual all set?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Time to fish." He picked up the fishing rod and headed for the pond.

Sam followed, still leafing through the journal. "Why can't we just leave the rosary again?"

"Because they're expensive, and besides, I like this one." Dean made an experimental cast. The rosary went flying through the night to land with a perfect splash near the middle of the pond. A handful of fish surfaced in response. "There we go. Start up the Latin."

"If that actually gets a bite—"

"I'll be laughing just as hard as you will. Latin, Sammy. Now."

Sam had barely begun the incantation when there was a familiar, metallic _click_ behind them. He stopped.

"Back away from the water," a woman's voice ordered.

Of _all_ the times for civilians to interrupt.

"_Now_, fuckrabbits!"

Dean and Sam shot each other confused looks. "Did she just call us _fuckrabbits?_" Sam nodded. "What the fuck is a fuckrabbit?"

"Maybe it's a Southern thing," Sam suggested.

"I said to back away from the water!"

Dean turned around, as much as he could without dragging the rosary out of the water, and swore when he realized that the moonlight was reflecting softly off a rifle barrel pointed straight at him. One—two—_three?_ Three people with guns? For illegal fishing?

_Christ, no wonder nobody drowns out here anymore. They all get shot._

"Get away from the water," the woman in the middle ordered again. She sounded more annoyed this time.

"If you just let us explain—"

"Back away before he pulls you in." Dean blinked. Looked at Sam, who shrugged.

There was a tug on the fishing line.

"_Jesus!_" Dean yelped, jerking the line out; the rosary went flying overhead, raining pondwater down on them. The woman and her accomplices ducked out of the way. They—

_They were being careful not to let the water touch them._

Dean didn't think, just grabbed Sammy's arm and dragged him away from the pond's edge—just as the water bubbled and a great big gray _something_ came boiling out of it.

It was made of fog, shining bright and pale in the moonlight, and reared above the trees. Face and body were suggestions in the mist, shifting every second, and not all the suggestions were even vaguely human.

"Erik! Red! Towels!"

Next thing Dean knew, he had a faceful of terrycloth. Someone was scrubbing the water droplets off his skin. He fought back, and got knocked to the ground for his trouble. Another thud told him that Sam was having similar luck.

_This job is _so _not worth it._

Finally they let go, and he jumped to his feet. "What the hell are you doing?" he yelled. "We're trying to get rid of that—"

The woman had lowered the gun, but the glare she was giving them was near fatal enough. "_That_ is Asiyadali, and if you think a rosary is going to get rid of something that's been here longer than _people_, you've taken too many blows to the head."

Dean spat out a strand of cotton that had lodged in his mouth. "It's an ashy what?"

"Asiyadali. Fisher spirit. Guardian of the waters."

His brain caught on the word _spirit_, but Sam beat him to it. "It's a ghost and a hazard! You need to get rid of it, not—"

"Hunters," Red—he guessed it was Red, anyway, since she had red hair, and the other one was clearly a guy and _Erik_ was obviously a guy's name—muttered.

"Asiyadali is _not_ a _ghost_," the middle woman corrected sharply. Behind them, the thing in the pond made a noise that sounded like a cross between a crashing wave and a sick dolphin. "He's a guardian of the waters. You get rid of him, you've effectively destroyed the entire North American fishing industry. Recreational _and_ commercial."

"Fish god?" Dean guessed.

"That's the simplistic way of looking at it, but since you're hunters, I guess that's the best I can hope for."

"Hey!"

"Look, lady, we're professionals—"

"My name is Ada," she growled, "and the last 'professional' tried to salt the whole pond. He had a truck full of rock salt. Do you have _any_ idea what that would have done to the local ecosystem?"

"It would have made the pond safe!"

"The pond's safe enough for people smart enough to stay out of the water!" Red snarled.

"You killed him?"

"Didn't have to," Erik said. "Idiot fell in."

"So?"

Ada sighed. "When we took over care of this pond from the state, we made a deal with Asiyadali. No more sacrifices as the cost of keeping the fisheries intact. But anything—and any_one_—that goes into the water is his. You can't expect an entity that ancient to starve himself based on our modern morals."

"Sure you can," Dean said. "Just a matter of banishing the son of a—"

"And what ritual do you plan on using?" Ada snapped. "Asiyadali predates _everybody_. Even the Indians. This little trinket of yours—" She picked up the rosary and rattled it at him. "This wouldn't even _sting_ him. Fishing line might come in handy for cleaning you out from between his teeth, though."

Dean dared a glance at the—the thing. He didn't _remember_ teeth—

The fog-ghost-god-thingie shifted again, and its face took on the appearance of an angry alligator. Definitely teeth. Christ, those things were probably as tall as Sam. "But it _does_ kill people," he said stubbornly. "You just admitted it. And if it kills people, it needs—"

"Do you have any idea how many _millions_ of people rely on fishing for their lives and livelihoods?" the woman snapped. "Just on _this_ continent? And we don't know, really, that he's not the last of his kind on _Earth_, so that would make it even _more_. Not to mention what it would do to the world's ecosystem! Are the lives of a few terminally stupid people worth that much?"

"You don't have the right to decide that!" Sam shouted.

"And who does?" She stood toe-to-toe with Sam and yelled up at his face, even though he was at least a foot and a half taller than she was. Dean had to give her credit for guts. "You? The state? God help us, the paving company? Those seventeen deaths you found in the paper were the ones they _couldn't pay off!_ There were _thirty-eight_ families that took their hush money and reported their kids as runaways!"

"You have to _do_ something!"

"We _are!_ You think I'm out here in the middle of the night for my fucking _health?_"

There was a growl from the water. "Ada," Red warned.

Ada shook her head, as if snapping out of a trance. "Fucking hunters," she muttered, rubbing her temples. She shouted something at the thing in the water, in a language that Dean didn't recognize.

Asiyadali growled back at her. It was shifting erratically now, never holding a form long enough to be recognized. Did that mean it was pissed?

"_Kaniya!_" Ada yelled. "_Lakora ne chetel kaniya!_"

For a second, Dean thought he saw her eyes glow, like fog in moonlight. "What the hell are you?" he asked.

"The unlucky priestess charged with keeping him tame," she said wearily. Asiyadali began melting back into the water, muttering and growling and obviously unhappy. The moonlight made Ada look suddenly old.

Oh, yeah. There was magic here, big-time magic. And upsetting it was probably _not_ the best idea he and Sam had ever had.

"Look, you two. Tell the other hunters to leave this alone. You upset him, and I don't have a successor in place yet."

"You're going to sacrifice yourself," Sam said softly.

"If it comes to that, yes," Ada said. "Because that's what the priestess _does_." She glanced from Sam, who was staring at her in what might have been respect, to Dean, who was giving her his best _you must be insane_ look. "We keep him happy. Now," she added.

"Now what—"

He realized that she'd been intentionally distracting them as soon as something hard collided with the back of his head.

* * *

The bed felt funny. It was moving. Not altogether unpleasant. Kinda reminded Dean of this girl he knew who'd had a free-flow waterbed— 

Water.

_Wait a minute._

He opened his eyes. He was flat on his back, staring up at stars and a full moon that was well past zenith, and his head hurt.

He pushed himself up, and the surface beneath him rocked in response. Water splashed.

A boat.

A goddamned _boat_.

Somewhere nearby, someone groaned. "Sammy?"

"Yeah."

Dean stood up—and nearly overbalanced and fell into the water. Sam swore and grabbed for the nearest part of the boat, and then swore some more; apparently whatever he'd grabbed was sharp.

His eyes were adjusting now. They were in a boat in the middle of a lake. Key word, _middle_. He couldn't make out the shoreline from here, so it definitely _wasn't_ Asiyadali's pond. Good. He wasn't in the mood to be sacrificed.

There were some dots of light that might have belonged to houses, but they were tucked away in the heavy trees that ringed the water. Moon-silvered water, black trees, dim lights. The moonlight wasn't bright enough to tell if the shore was close enough to swim for it.

Light flared, blinding him. "Found a flashlight," Sam said needlessly, shading the light a bit. "And—" Paper rustled. Dean glanced over to see Sam fumbling with something fastened to his shirt. "What the hell?"

"What is it?" Now that he knew it wasn't the pond, Dean wasn't really worried. Someone would find them once the sun came up—fishermen, water-skiers, _somebody_. Or maybe, once they could see where the shore was, they could swim for it. Or row. Didn't most boats come with oars?

"It's a note," Sam said, finally getting the paper free. "It—it's from Ada."

"How fucking considerate," Dean grumbled. "Well?"

"Gimme a minute—" Sam juggled flashlight, note, and something else until he had the note where he could read it. "What it boils down to, Dean—they stuck us out here. The boat's anchored, the oars are gone, and the engine's disabled." Dean groaned. "However, they did give us sunscreen, beer, snacks, and fishing poles. And—" He picked something up and poked the flashlight into it. "I think this is a bucket of worms."

"Bait."

"It's not sushi."

_Oh, this just gets better and better._ "And what, we wait for them to come back?"

"No. Apparently sometime tomorrow they'll call the local authorities to report a stranded boat. The car is at Michael's Landing, wherever that is. She— Er."

"What?"

"She advises us to pretend to be drunk fishermen. It's apparently so common out here that they won't even blink."

Dean knew that expression. Sam wasn't telling him everything. "And?"

"There's supposedly a thirty-pound demonic striped bass lurking in the depths of this lake. It says we're welcome to exorcise it."

Dean tilted his head back to look at the moon and stars, considering that. "Dude, how do you exorcise a _fish?_"

The strangled noise from the back of the boat made him worry that Sam had tried to eat the worms. (God knew it wouldn't be the first time; the chaos that had ensued when Sam had read _How to Eat Fried Worms_...) Instead, his brother was curled up around himself, laughing so hard the boat started rocking. "Exorcise—a—_fish?_" he gasped, and laughed harder.

_Yeah. Not gonna need the beers to convince the cops _he's_ a drunk fisherman._

Dean picked up one of the fishing poles. It was a little fancier than the overgrown bamboo sticks Dad had used to teach them to fish, or even the one he'd tied a rosary to earlier, but he could figure it out. "Hand me the worms and hold the light still."

Sam wiped the tears out of his eyes and handed him the bucket. "What are you doing?"

Dean threaded a worm onto the hook. "I am going to salvage _something_ out of this trip, even if it's only a few hours of very relaxed fishing," he said, grinning as he made a cast. "Besides. Can't exorcise a fish till you catch it."

Sam collapsed into laughter again.

**_the end  
_**


End file.
